Social Media Will Soon Be A Primary News Source

The fact that social media is becoming more important for brands, is well known, and is beginning to be accepted. What is also interesting, is that social media is on the rise, and may well be a primary news source for 2.95+ billion people, who will be using the medium by 2020, as it overtakes newspapers. According to some more figures released by Zenith, it is expected at 20% of all internet advertising spend, will be done for social media. In other words, social media entities like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp, will have a greater share in how we know, how we consume, and how we form our opinions in the future.

Facebook reporting and news feed

Despite being what the company is, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg had admitted that there were issues with the various measurement metrics on the site. This meant that the figures published by Facebook,which gave advertisers matrices about how successful their campaigns have been, often had figures that were not the real ones. There was a upheal in the industry with regards to this, but many also believed that Facebok did the right thing by admitting publicly how things went wrong, and thus stood by the social media giant.

It is a known fact, that the news feed on Facebook works on the premise of algorithms, which push up news items that had gone viral. The issue was that some of these news turned out to be totally false, which then affected the way and what people consumed as news. This also included the US Presidential election related, including ‘Pope Francis endorsed Trump’, Republicans being called the dumbest group of voters in the country, a few other anti Hillary Clinton news items as well.

As per latest developments, Facebook’s team including Mark Zuckerberg is consulting journalists and fact-checkers to ensure, that the algorithm on the site is improved. The team is also known to have been in touch with various stakeholders to resolve the issue.

However, some core facts will perhaps never change. With the advent of Facebook Live, where anyone with an Account on the site can interact with others Live via video conversation, it augers well for marketeers as they look to create new branding experiences for customers. With 1.8 billion people using the site, the companies still are waiting to pay the company to ensure that they get the right advertising space on the site.

Instagram refurbishing

Instagram has seen some radical changes to its look this year. A company which started in 2010, now been the property of Facebook since 2014, when it was purchased by the later for $1billion. From a change in the logo, to bringing in a new look and feel on the application, Instagram received a lot of responses from across the channels online, and did generate quiet a few headlines for that matter. Stories, live videos, and the ‘like comments’ were some of the new features which users got to witness on the app.

In June 2016, Strata had conducted a study, which concluded that advertizers are turning to Instagram more often than Twitter for social media campaigns. However, with increasing number of features now being similar to Facebook, industry experts are also echoing a fear that Instagram may end up being Facebook 2.0 primarily. Also, there have been questions whether Instagram ought to stop drawing from innovations which have been figured on Snapchat. Never the less, Instagram continues to be a success with 300 million daily users and 500 million users using the app on a monthly basis.

Privacy Policy changes on WhatsApp

WhatsApp started out as a free messaging application, but can now do so much more. From Video Calling to message recalls, from end-to-end encryptions, to the 2-step verification process laid out a whole new set of functionality of the app. But however, the changing privacy policy terms did indeed grab eye balls which caused a lot of fury among the audience, as did the fake new developments.

Till now, WhatsApp has been a jewel in the crown of Facebook, having being purchased for $19 billion in2014. WhatsApp also was resistant to a revenue driven, or algorithm focused functionality, but three are expert who believe, that it will eventually become a tool for promotion by advertisers where doctored news or fake news could then be circulated.

Snapchat becoming more competitive

When social media giants have been mixing and matching, and doing all it can to create a new experience for users on their network, Snapchat was not to stay behind. The social media powerhouse had created partnerships with NBC and BBC for the Rio Olympics 2016, which gave them a very strong footing in terms of popularity. The ‘Live Stories’ feature was responsible for this. From an average 7 billion videos daily, there are 10 billion videos being viewed on the video and photo sharing app.

Snapchat has also been on the shopping spree across verticals. It includes VR, AR, 3D, cameras, content, and even advertising, which were important moves, spread across 2016. It has also introduced the advertising API (application programming interface) named Snapchat Partners, which allows 3rd party vendors to sell Snapchat Ads.

In the year 2017, Snapchat is expected to make a public offering for the company, perhaps in Q1 itself. With the expected launch of Spectacle, AR and VR will get a major push, as users could well record and broadcast videos seamless, without having to use their smartdevices. However, how much of it turns out to be as per executed plans, needs to be noted.

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